James, over on Mick's blog Bampots Utd, provided a link to another site, called Irish Blog, where there was a piece on the cover-up at Kincora House. I spent a while on the site as there are quite a lot of good articles there on the subject of the big Establishment child abuse cover-up. One of them deals with how the sexual abuse of children was viewed all those years ago. It's weird looking back at the attitudes back then and, as with any look at morality in histoy, it's extremely difficult for us to understand those attitudes. It's like studying late Victorian times and trying to come to terms with the sheer hypocrisy endemic in those days. At a time when sex was a taboo subject and even table legs were covered up out of modesty, there were actually more prostitutes operating throughout Britain than at any other time before or since, while top politicians, judges, etc struggled with the effects of syphilis on their mental faculties.
Freud spoke and wrote about deep-seated, animal instincts that we had to overcome and repress in order to maintain a civilised society. He argued that these instincts were there as soon as we were born, including drives of a violent and sexual nature. Governments used these ideas to try to keep people in check and Freud's daughter Anna was extremely influential in American political circles. The late Sixties and early Seventies saw a backlash against what were viewed as fascist and repressive policies. Now everything was all about freedome. They still, however, swallowed Freud's ideas whole, including his stuff about child sexuality. Since everyone was anti-Freud then child sexuality was no longer to be repressed.
In this day and age, when Freud is taken with a huge dose of salt, it's difficult for us to understand the slavish devotion to his ideas, even by those that completely opposed his conclusions. Nowadays it's better understood that children have a sexuality but it's not an adult sexuality and there's no real connection between the two. I know from my own experience as a teacher that young children like nothing better than a good fiddle about with themselves, sometimes unselfconsciously in front of everybody else! (This is usualy fixed by the simple expedient of giving them an 'important' job to do, like holding the register.) Slightly older girls might be a bit flirty with a male teacher, as some of them did with me, but it's not blatant and there's no sexual intent behind it. A Primary 5 girl, in her gym kit, telling me that I can "look but you can't touch!" is just regurgitating something she's seen on TV and is trying to get a bit of attention. She thought it was hilarious when I responded that the toe of my shoe would be touching her backside if she didn't get in the line!
Anyway, I digress. The attitudes of the Sixties and Seventies explain the way that the Paedophile Information Exchange was supported by the National Council for Civil Liberties. Such ideas in the abstract, however, are one thing; the vile creatures that actually preyed on children are quite another. I can't imagine that the children of the Sixties and the Seventies were any different to children nowadays; in fact, I know since I grew up in that period myself. I know for a fact that I wouldn't have wanted the sexual attentions of some disgusting pervert foisted on me and nor would any other child. The perpetrators of such crimes must have been aware of what they were doing to the children they were abusing and so must those that covered up for them.
Another article on the Irish Blog talks about Geoffrey Dickens, the Tory MP that handed the infamous, missing dossier to Leon Brittan. Apparently Dickens was a bit of a loose cannon and exhibited some strange notions, which could go some way to explaining why he wasn't taken seriously about the extent of child abuse in the Establishment. As it says on the Irish Blog, 'In 1990, he called for a debate on the Commons on “the spread of satanism and devil worship in the United Kingdom”.' This is meant to show how obtuse and even perhaps mad he could be. I, however, would not be too quick to dismiss what he was saying in 1990.
I can't be the only one that remembers the furore about 'ritual sexual abuse of children' in 1990. A co-ordinated investigation by social workers throughout Britain had uncovered a secret organisation, which abused and murdered children as part of some kind of pseudo-religious ceremonies. There were politicians, judges, celebrities and members of the nobility involved and the investigation was closing in. The newspapers were full of stories about these ceremonies and what took place at them. There were even television documentaries seeking to uncover the dirty secret of our Establishment. And then came the Orkney scandal.
Suddenly everything changed. Social workers became figures of scorn and ridicule. The investigation into the ritual sexual abuse of children quietly disappeared and was never mentioned again. Nobody trusted social workers and nobody liked social workers. They were part of the 'nanny state' and professed to know better how to raise your children than you did yourself. The whole thing smacked of a set-up and just because the idea of ritual child abuse disappeared doesn't mean that it didn't actually happen.
In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries many homosexuals used Satanic worship and even the worship of ancient Egyptian deities and the like as a cover. Only those in the know would be invited along and, as long as they were discreet, the Establishment turned a blind eye. T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, was well-known in these circles when he was a student. You can easily imagine that paedophiles would use the same subterfuge. Not only that, but others could be invited to take part in order to try to justify their evil cravings. Ambitious individuals would see it as a small price to pay to be accepted into 'the club'. Meanwhile MI5 would have the cameras rolling just in case anyone tried to change their mind later. Any outsiders that discovered what was going on could be coerced or blackmailed into looking the other way. When there's too much heat then a few individuals can be thrown to the dogs; dead individuals preferably.
I know this sounds like something you'd read on McMurdo's blog but there's definitely something big going on. Would so much effort be put into a cover-up if it was a case of a few old pederasts indulging their passions? There is far more to this business than meets the eye and the obvious move to discredit social workers in the early Nineties shows that they were onto something. I'm not much of a one for conspiracy theories but this is one case where I'll make an exception.
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